Wasteland Wasteland 2 Pre-Release Discussion Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[VonVentrue]

Sounds extremely promising, thank you for sharing your impressions with us, sea. As long as Fargo prevents the game from launching prematurely, there's a chance all the problems will be ironed out over the course of the beta phase.

 

[tuluse]

This is what pisses me off as well... Fargo dies by the mouth, not for delivering something bad, but for promising way more than he can deliver.

W1 was not a C&C game, the whole "Do you kill the dog?" was binary and laughable. And yet they hyped C&C so much in W2, saying they were in a totally different level than BioWare and all that.... WHY, if they can't deliver?

Well, Fargo does differentiate from c&c and reactivity. The world reacting to killing the dog is what impressed him about W1, not the fact that you had a choice to kill the dog.

 

[anus_pounder]

I'll probably enjoy the beta (and full game), but as always I'll enjoy the codex topic even more. :3

 

[SophosTheWise]

Talmadge Blevins ‏@talign2h
In Wasteland 2 beta. I actually felt like I was playing Fallout 3 -- well, what Fallout 3 would have been if it didn't go first-person.

 

[sea]

Talmadge Blevins ‏@talign2h
In Wasteland 2 beta. I actually felt like I was playing Fallout 3 -- well, what Fallout 3 would have been if it didn't go first-person.

It's worth noting that that man works for IGN. Just saying.

 

[undecaf]

Talmadge Blevins ‏@talign2h
In Wasteland 2 beta. I actually felt like I was playing Fallout 3 -- well, what Fallout 3 would have been if it didn't go first-person.

Eh... If this was the first impression I had read about the game, I'd be bracing myself for a disappointment.

 

[AstroZombie]

I don't remember controlling a party in any of the previous FO games :p

 

[undecaf]

I don't remember controlling a party in any of the previous FO games :p

Tactics.

 

[felipepepe]

Infinitron, AoD was already a C&C heavy game when we first played the beta almost 2 years ago, it wasn't a regular cRPG and then Vince added all that as an afterthought a couple of months before release... obviously they can improve and add more stuff, but I doubt it will reach the standards Fargo was talking about: "It’s a virtual impossibility for two people to have the exact same experience of the game" and stuff like that.

Well, Fargo does differentiate from c&c and reactivity. The world reacting to killing the dog is what impressed him about W1, not the fact that you had a choice to kill the dog.

C&C is choice AND consequence bro... reactivity = consequence. IIRC, the consequence of the dog were also binary, you kill him the boy gets angry at you/attacks, you don't kill him you get nothing... which means you're only really choosing between doing or not doing the quest, and the game only reacts if you do. So even the simplest side-quest in Ultima 1 had the same level of C&C that the Dog quest, almost 10 year before W1...

 

[Visperas]

Thanx for the info sea!
The lack of deep C&C is ceirtanly troubling but after everything Fargo said I expect them to work on it now that they almost everything working. I mean, I find it logical they would build several simple quests to test everything and then add more options and reactivity later on.

 

[Infinitron]

Infinitron, AoD was already a C&C heavy game when we first played the beta almost 2 years ago, it wasn't a regular cRPG and then Vince added all that as an afterthought a couple of months before release... obviously they can improve and add more stuff, but I doubt it will reach the standards Fargo was talking about: "It’s a virtual impossibility for two people to have the exact same experience of the game" and stuff like that.

Yes, we all know what Vault Dweller thinks about the current state of Wasteland 2 and how a "C&C RPG" should be designed, but you'll excuse me if I'm not exactly confident in the professionalism and practicality of Iron Tower's RPG development practices.

We'll see how the game ends up.

 

[tuluse]

C&C is choice AND consequence bro... reactivity = consequence. IIRC, the consequence of the dog were also binary, you kill him the boy gets angry at you/attacks, you don't kill him you get nothing... which means you're only really choosing between doing or not doing the quest, and the game only reacts if you do. So even the simplest side-quest in Ultima 1 had the same level of C&C that the Dog quest, almost 10 year before W1...

You can have consequences without choice. In fact let me use the same example Fargo did. In GTA3 (and on), you are forced to ally with various factions. You have no say in when this happens, but it still happens. When you change allegiance the other factions try to kill you on sight.

This is reactivity. The game world changes in response to what's happening. Contrast this with Oblivion where nothing changes no matter what you do. You've given a lot of choices in Oblivion but there is no reaction to them. You can close the gates, but it doesn't change what people in the towns do at all.

I'm just arguing in abstract right now because I want both choices and consequences just like you. It sort of just dawned on me, when Fargo says it's all about reactivity that doesn't necessitate choice.

 

[AstroZombie]

Tactics.

I stand corrected.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

“So we’ve been putting it into people’s hands saying, ‘okay, what do you think?’ The response has been super, and we’d love to add more choice, more reactivity and subtlety, which is what we plan to do. This is a new process to me because I would never put something this early into the public, you know, I’m sort of used to getting things out much further along, but fortunately having gone through this up to date, the positives far outweigh the negatives.”

So at least Fargo understants game's shortcommings. But I must say that I felt a great relive after reading Sea review. I am deeply thankfull for it ! So everything that Fargo said (beside C&C), even good combat AI which I belivie he mentiioned only once, turn out to be true. Maybe we should trust him in delivering C&C? I mean he said game will be out after few months. Late Backer sections also mentions few months. I think he said something, that some places and choices were cut from beta so after official launch betaplayers can be suprised.

Are those C&C written but just not implemented yet? Sea, were any new choices added with new patches in beta?

 

[Kem0sabe]

It's wait and see at this point regarding reactivity and C&C, looking at inxile's body of work or even Fargo's, i can't see many if any examples of it to take positives from. Once everyone get's their hands on the beta, we can see if the potential is there or not

 

[Infinitron]

It's wait and see at this point regarding reactivity and C&C, looking at inxile's body of work or even Fargo's, i can't see many if any examples of it to take positives from. Once everyone get's their hands on the beta, we can see if the potential is there or not

The Bard's Tale (2004) actually had some nice C&C in it.

 

[SophosTheWise]

By the way, when I try to load up the Steam version of Wasteland 1 it just changes my Windows' color scheme and then crashes. Anyone know what's up with that?

 

[Roguey]

Yes, we all know what Vault Dweller thinks about the current state of Wasteland 2 and how a "C&C RPG" should be designed, but you'll excuse me if I'm not exactly confident in the professionalism and practicality of Iron Tower's RPG development practices.

We'll see how the game ends up.

Well, there's also Josh.
On non-linear narratives:

Achieving this is actually not difficult when it's planned for from the beginning. If someone suggests it 9 months into development, forget it.

On the difficulty of implementing C&C

There are a lot of developers who have never really tried it, so they dip their toes in on their own, realize that it isn't fall-down easy, and conclude it is mythically difficult.

It's more about elegant planning than it is about making things inherently complicated.

Sounds to me like inXile are bad planners.

 

[Kem0sabe]

It's wait and see at this point regarding reactivity and C&C, looking at inxile's body of work or even Fargo's, i can't see many if any examples of it to take positives from. Once everyone get's their hands on the beta, we can see if the potential is there or not

The Bard's Tale (2004) actually had some nice C&C in it.

Yeah, it was good fun for what it was. I actually replayed it not long ago on my phone, not sure how they managed to fit the game into it, but it did.

 

[sea]

Are those C&C written but just not implemented yet? Sea, were any new choices added with new patches in beta?

I do know many of my suggestions with respect to gameplay tweaks, small dialogue updates and fixes, character stats, difficulty, quest options, etc. were implemented, and I'm sure the same is true of the other suggestions given by whoever else was involved in the pre-beta.

My opinion time: The thing with content generation is that it is a lot slower inside the realm of an organized development studio than "just add some more stuff" would suggest. If bugs can get replicated they can get fixed super fast. Content has all sorts of people involved - programmers, designers, writers and possibly artists too. It also has to be tested, even in a beta environment, to make sure it doesn't break anything. That means C&C tends to take substantially more time than tweaks and fixes do to implement. Remember, it's only been two weeks since they even got any outside feedback from anyone.

Sounds to me like inXile are bad planners.

Significant C&C story/structural stuff is already implemented and was certainly planned months in advance. There is one major piece of C&C in the beta already, which is on a scale that most games do not do. The issue that exists right now, in my opinion, is that there aren't enough things like follow-up side-quests to decisions are made, or enough bits of flavor dialogue; it's missing a lot of those little things that follow you around as you play.

More of my opinion time: You tend not to notice a lot of that stuff, especially in your own work, until you have the time to sit back and enjoy it as a player would, or get someone else to give hands-on time and start interrogating it. I had the same issue with Thirst despite having a really good sense of the C&C on a larger scale throughout its development; the smaller bits and pieces of reactivity that add up to create real immersion only happened as I played more and more and found myself asking logical questions like "why can't X happen?" or "hey, Y character would be great for this role instead if he/she survived earlier." In other words, I think very little of that can be blamed on a lack of planning, unless you are positing to sit back and have a game 100% finished design-wise before production ever starts - which is not very efficient.

 

[felipepepe]

ITT Roguey and I join forces to bully Infinitron.

 

[Infinitron]

ITT Roguey and I join forces to bully Infinitron.

I'm not alone.

 

[Jedi Master Radek]

Some. The thing with content generation is that it is a lot slower inside the realm of an organized development studio than "just add some more stuff" would suggest. If bugs can get replicated they can get fixed super fast. Content has all sorts of people involved - programmers, designers, writers and possibly artists too. It also has to be tested, even in a beta environment, to make sure it doesn't break anything. That means C&C tends to take substantially more time than tweaks and fixes do to implement.

I do know many of my suggestions with respect to gameplay tweaks, reactivity of NPC companion characters, character stats, difficulty, quest options, etc. were added.

Then its good enough, I think. Is it true as Fargo mentioned, that playing the beta slowly takes 6 to 10 hours?

 

[AstroZombie]

Battle lines are being drawn, I expect major bloodshed soon.

 

[sea]

Then its good enough, I think. Is it true as Fargo mentioned, that playing the beta slowly takes 6 to 10 hours?

I would say even longer than that, if you explore everything. I ticked up about 15 hours for my first complete play-through of all the content, and it's also very replayable.